Jun. 9, 2013 - 03:38PM
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WASHINGTON — The US Navy will start to experiment with 3-D printing this year by setting up printers in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego to produce custom-designed plastic parts and gadgets that crews can use. Examples include small parts like clips, brackets and gas caps.

But the service envisions future applications for the technology, such as building ammunition. And even further out? Anything from pizza to a new kidney. Sure, these possibilities may be a long way off, if they ever happen, but more practical applications are underway.

“It’s starting small and starting simple,” said Lt. Ben Kohlmann, who is overseeing the trial at Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC) in Norfolk. And now that the Navy is trying this revolutionary manufacturing process, it’s looking for ideas about how to use it.

“The real solutions will come from the deck plates as we unveil this and a sailor says, ‘Hey, this is a part I think I might want printed,’ ” Kohlmann said.

Additive manufacturing, as this process also is known, is designed to rapidly field parts on demand using materials such as metal, rubber and plastic. It is one of industry’s most promising and quickly evolving corners. Industrial sites in the military are starting to experiment with it — for instance, aviation supply depots are using it to make castings for parts no longer sold, and naval engineers are using it to build ship models. Surgeons are using it to produce prosthetic limbs that match the dimensions of the limbs they are replacing.

Contractors, similarly, are increasingly using the technology to build parts for the latest fighter jets, and the head researcher at the Office of Naval Research gave it a ringing endorsement, saying it had unlimited potential for the Navy.

The NWDC experiment is to see if and how the fleet could use this. One idea: a custom target for ships to use in gunnery exercises.

How It Works

The 3-D printing experiment is the brainchild of the Chief of Naval Operations’ Rapid Innovation Cell, or CRIC, a band of about 15 junior officers and enlisted personnel tasked with rapidly bringing “disruptive” ideas to the fleet. Formed nine months ago, the group’s upcoming experiment is likely to be one of the first ways the Navy’s rank and file encounter their handiwork.

Let’s say a sailor needs an unusual part not offered in the supply system. The first step would be to take it to the 3-D printing center in Norfolk or San Diego, where a civilian technician will see if the design for the part exists. If not, he can create a 3-D “point cloud” model.

“That point cloud [is] literally millions of individual points they can smooth and shape to the exact shape that they want,” said Kohlmann, who added that this will allow sailors to “create parts that are specific to a specific ship.”

A 3-D graphic will appear onscreen and the sailor will verify it’s correct. If it is, the technician will hit the “print” button and, in about five hours, the part will be ready for pickup. The sailor can then inspect the part and test to see if it fits right. If it doesn’t, the part can be reshaped and printed again.

“They’re compiling a list of the things that could be printed,” Kohlmann said, “and once they have those in place, we’re going to talk to our technologist and see how it matches up with the materials they can print.”

The printers are expected to be in place for testing by November. The machines will work with plastic and may be able to work with rubber, making it possible to design gaskets — a part always in demand with engineers. The trial is likely to start by December, Kohlmann said.

What It Could Do

Before the fleet becomes a veritable 3-D print shop, a lot of technological leaps are required. The machines must be able to produce items that match the intended design consistently and stand up to military specifications. Right now, metal printing requires heavy-duty infrastructure not easily shifted onto a ship, Kohlmann said. And fashioning objects out of multiple materials remains at the cutting edge and very expensive.

Even if all these steps are figured out, the Navy still confronts another challenge: copyrights. Manufacturers retain the intellectual property rights for their products, one reason the Navy’s upcoming experiment will reproduce parts only without patents or that are no longer produced.

“The Navy hasn’t bought the intellectual property rights to any of its parts since the mid-1980s,” wrote Lt. Cmdr. Michael Llenza in a May article in Armed Forces Journal, a Defense News sister publication. “In order to print parts, we’d have to buy the designs, likely at great cost (though we could scan them, which would open another can of legal worms).”

Llenza, a naval flight officer and fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, said the Navy needs to harness this emerging technology and offers a number of ways it could revolutionize warfare. In his AFJ essay, he suggests that submarine tenders and other Military Sealift Command ships could become “floating factories,” capable of printing on demand. Another possibility is printing warfare implements, from ammunition to an armed drone that “flies right out of the printer.”

“I think there is some capability in the near term, two or three years down the road, to having some of these facilities in forward-deployed locations,” said Kohlmann, who ticked off possible sites like Guam, Bahrain and Japan. But the eventual hope, perhaps decades away, is to send 3-D printing to sea.

“What we envision is having an additive manufacturing facility aboard a carrier and they’re forward-deployed, [in an anti-access, area-denial] environment,” he said. “If they somehow get their logistics chain cut off, they have the ability to organically create materials, both plastic and metal, whatever they want, for the battle group that they’re supporting.”